Programming specialists are more and more demanded by modern information society.  The programming specialist’s professional development begins at school, when the young people choose their professions. The professional development is a lifelong process that does not end after obtaining of formal education and professional qualification. It is the self-determination process within which the important aspects are the programming specialist’s motivation, professional self-improvement, self-education, self-assessment of own professional proficiency and self-management of own career. The professional development is a multi-stage and multi-level cyclic process as a result of which the programming specialist can turn from a beginner into a highly level professional. At the same time it is nonlinear process, because the programming specialist’s professional development might have its rise and fall. The aim of studies is to substantiate theoretically the programming specialists’ professional development as lifelong self-determination and self-organization process within the context of career development, creating the methodological base for the further studies. The programming specialist’s career could be studied: 1) as a lifelong process (the career going horizontally); 2) as the development up to a high position in an IT company (a career going vertically); 3) as an independent developer’s career, when commencing business at his or her own company and/or within the framework of planned project (start up).   The programming specialist’s professionalism is an integral entirety of his/her many qualities, where competency is important in several spheres, not only in programming.

Abstract. Nowadays, there is a great demand for engineers in various fields of specialization. This brings up the question whether it is determined by the fact that, due to various reasons, higher education institutions do not train a sufficient number of the demanded specialists, or the reason is that the specialists (engineers) trained are not able to compete, as they do not meet the demands of the society, job market (including the employers) and the professional environment. This issue determines the topicality of theoretical and empirical investigation of the competitiveness of engineers. The aim of this report is to provide a theoretical basis for the competitiveness of engineers and the possibilities of its promotion in terms of various aspects. The results of theoretical researches confirm that pedagogical and psychological science validates the competitiveness of engineers in terms of three aspects: the competitiveness of a personality; the competitiveness of a specialist in the broad sense of the term; the competitiveness of an engineer with the focus on the engineering specialization in the engineering science. It is not only important to study the competitiveness of an engineer, but also to provide a scientific background for possible methods, which could be used to promote the competitiveness during the process of education and professional growth based on modern learning theories and concepts.Keywords: engineer competitiveness, marketability, employability, competence. IntroductionContemporary social sciences, including pedagogy and psychology, carry out researches in the field of competitiveness. The topicality of such studies is determined by the inconsistency of globalization and globalization processes and their influence over sustainable development and competitiveness of the society. The more competitive each member of the society is, the more competitive is the society as such. The same can be told about the competitiveness of any enterprise. The fact that a person is self-developing both as a personality and as a specialist along with the environment of his or her life and professional activity means that this interaction is mutual, i.e., not only the competitiveness of each society or enterprise is determined by the competitiveness of each individual person, but the constantly changing social and professional environment is also impacting the competitive ability of each person substantially.Nowadays, there is a great demand for engineers in various fields of specialization. This brings up the question whether it is determined by the fact that due to various reasons higher education institutions do not train a sufficient number of demanded specialists, or the reason is that the specialists (engineers) trained are not able to compete, as they do not meet the demands of the society, job market (including the employers) and the professional environment. This issue determines the topicality of theoretical and empirical investigation of the competitiveness of engineers.The aim of this article is...

<p>In this article the authors give theoretical substantiation to the ideas of distance education, as well as offer an insight into the development of distance education, where the experience of many countries is summarized. The aim of the article is to publish the results of the theoretical research on the history of distance Education. As a result of research, the authors drew several conclusions: 1) since the 18th century, when the first attempt of distance education had been registered, till nowadays the humankind has amassed rich experience in this sphere;2) the correspondence education is the initial form of distance learning; 3) the development of distance education in the 20th century was facilitated by the development of information and communication technologies and their introduction into education; 4) in connection with the development of distance education, a new direction — media pedagogy — began its development in pedagogy.</p>

The ecological approach offers a wide range of opportunities regarding performing of interdisciplinary research in the educational sciences, as well as comprises significant potential of innovative, creative pedagogical activities in practice. One of the ways of the implementation of ecological approach is the workplace-based learning. The workplace-based learning are both scientific conception and strategy for the elaboration and development of professional education dual system in the state-level educational policy and educational management fields. The aim of research: to substantiate theoretically the workplace-based learning for the facilitation of the professional development of prospective and/or already working specialists. The concept of workplace-based learning has both wide and narrow meaning. According the wide meaning, the workplace-based learning facilitate the lifelong professional development of an individual for which the environment of professional activities is very important. According to the narrow meaning, the workplace-based learning mean the organization of prospective specialists' practice at the companies. The conception of workplace-based learning provides that the environment of professional education consists of two components: from the environment of educational establishment and from the base organization as the environment of professional activities. In the dual system of professional education both these environments form an indivisible integral entirety. The ecological approach provides a perspective for the sustainable development of dual professional education.

The development of a human being takes place in the interaction with his/her life environment. Educational environment, including distance education environment, is particularly important for the facilitation of the sustainability of all society and the development of each individual. Ecological paradigm becomes more and more topical in modern education. The authors of the article base their research on the ecological approach, where an educational institution as the distance education environment is a multicomponent/multicontextual system. The results of theoretical research enabled the authors to identify several contexts of distance education environment: informative environment, technological environment and e-environment that complementary supplement each other. There have been analyzed and compared several concepts related to distance education, identifying in them the common and different features. Ecological approach enabled to reveal the essence of distance education and to describe distance education environment from different aspects.